Election with voter fraud

A woman in our neighborhood, had a candidate she wanted on the board. She was a proxy, and presented the proxy with another paper ballot for the same person. She has been alleging all sorts of crimes on her unofficial Facebook page. I believe we should pursue charges of voter fraud.
She has had our HOA board & residents under siege because of a personal vendetta with the current president. She is a dinestic terrorists in our neighborhood for 9 months and we need it to stop. Has anyone had an issue such as this?

How to handle voter irregularities: robust election procedures that verify homeowner information, discard duplicate votes, etc. Many homeowners are confused by proxies or they change their minds and attend the meeting after all - so by itself misuse is not proof of anything.

How to deal with accusations and allegations: Are they true? Do you have proof? Does the accuser's behavior violate your association's governing documents? If you're on the board and the answer to any of these questions is "no", then let it go. If the accusations rise to the level of defamation, the accused individual can talk to a lawyer about potential legal action. Warning: defamation claims are hard to prove, and collecting damages is harder. If there are no provable damages, you're probably wasting your time - but I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, talk to your own lawyer about the details.

How to deal with the Drama Llamas: They want attention. Don't give it to them. They want to provoke a reaction, and boards typically will give them what they want - which encourages them to continue with the bad behavior. Consider implementing the "gray rock" technique (Google it). I call it "brief, bland, boring", and it involves making the Drama Llama's interactions with the board as dull and boring as possible. Caveat: if the accuser's behavior violates the law, seems dangerous in some way, or is escalating, then bring in the professionals (police, etc.) - these things are beyond the board's ability to handle on their own.

Your title says voter fraud, but everything else that’s followed since has been about her threatening people (sounds like you’re the target?) Keep those issues separate.

You said this lady had a proxy, which would mean she was casting a vote for another homeowner. You also said she presented the proxy with another paper ballot for the same person – are you saying the ballot was also the owner who gave you the proxy or someone else? If not, are you saying she got hold of a paper ballot which is supposed to be confidential?

The paper ballot should have been turned in by the person casting it, whereas the person named as proxy would attend the meeting to cast a vote on behalf of the owner who couldn’t attend. If the same owner named a proxy AND completed a separate ballot, one or the other should have been disallowed. Did this affect the election outcome?

Personally, I don’t see this as something to sue over – it might be another matter if this happened with dozens of ballots and this lady was responsible. Even then, it would be easier to disallow those ballots and those homeowners would have to show up and cast their votes personally or turn in their ballots themselves. And what would you sue for – this is more of a screw up the board should have addressed when it was discovered. By the way, when WAS it discovered and what happened next? Did anyone talk to the owner to verify what he or she wanted to do?

(Yet another example of how proxies get messed up because people don’t understand and ask questions or fail/refuse to read and follow instructions)

As far as the allegations are concerned, it would appear you are the target, since you say you have 1500 pages of proof. . How has this lady’s actions made it more difficult for the board to conduct business – are people believing what she says and show up at the meeting to disrupt the board’s ability to conduct business? If that’s the case, what do the rest of your board colleagues have to say about this?

You say you have 1500 pages of proof - so take Cathy’s suggestions and have your attorney review it and you can discuss your options. If this proof is more about the lady’s attitude towards you, I wouldn’t call it a HOA issue. You could sue, but remember, it’s one thing to sue, another to win and still another to collect. If you can prove these allegations are disrupting your personal life, go and do what it do. Otherwise, ignore it – when people like this see no one’s paying attention (because they think the person is a crank and petty as hell), it’s not as fun.

The way to deal with people who are spreading lies is through transparency. If the board is doing an excellent job, people should know about it. The board has the bully pulpit (newsletter, website, email blasts) that lets you get the correct message out. After a while, people will figure out that the liar doesn't actually know what she's talking about. She still may get some traction with the folks who are like her (they want drama), but the reasonable ones should be able to see through her after a while.

Hang in there. And sometimes you have to take the long view and let people find out the hard way. We had a group of complainers and troublemakers who ran off our entire board last spring. They got themselves elected to the board and then proceeded to screw up publicly. Now more rational people are in charge and are picking up the pieces. It all goes with the territory, unfortunately.

In the phrase "Common Interest Privilege," "common interest" refers to the interests that co-defendants in a lawsuit share. The co-defendants and co-defendants' attorneys can exchange emails and have their communications protected by the "common interest privilege" rule.

I see no application of the CIP rule to someone who posts false accusations on Facebook.

JackieB4, the exception is a legal principle called "defamation per se." This explains it more eloquently:

So what makes a statement worthy of the “per se” designation? While, ultimately, what is considered “defamation per se” will depend upon how that term is defined by the specific jurisdiction in which the case is filed, there are several categories of statements that are recognized in many jurisdictions as inherently harmful and, thus, defamatory per se:

-- Statements that someone is guilty of a serious crime

-- Statements that someone was “unchaste” or engaged in sexual misconduct

-- Statements that someone has a “loathsome” or contagious disease

-- Statements that someone engaged in behavior that was incompatible with the proper conduct of his business, trade, or profession

These categories of statements are so commonly recognized as constitutional defamation per se because they are obviously harmful to the subject’s reputation without the need for further explanation or additional facts. With this premise in mind, a number of jurisdictions, like Ohio, do not limit “defamation per se” to a specific list of categories, but, rather, through a broader definitional concept. Thus, for example, in Ohio, any false statement will be considered defamatory per se if it naturally exposes the subject of the statement to hatred, ridicule, contempt or disgrace.

When defamation per se occurs, the plaintiff need not prove he/she was financially harmed. More at https://www.bdblaw.com/what-is-defamation-per-se/

Good article: https://www.floridacondohoalawblog.com/2019/11/26/say-what/

And calling someone a domestic terrorist is not defamation?

Domestic terrorism is a crime so it would have been libel per se, or libel on its face, if the subject's name had been used because it's being posted to third persons who are not members of her HOA.

Is the troublemaker planting explosives in the clubhouse and detonating them during a community event? Or destroying HOA property? That's domestic terrorism.

If the term is applied to someone lobbing verbal grenades, then it's being used in a metaphorical sense. Colorful, vivid language that I appreciate - as ElleN noted, I'm all about the metaphors - but that is not terrorism in the literal sense even though the victims of vivid language can feel as though they're bleeding (in a metaphorical sense). Nobody expects literal bodies lying on the ground, which is the usual goal of terrorism.

I do expect that the troublemaker is a bully and a vocational dissident whose goal is to shut everybody up or force them to do things her way. Metaphorical terrorism.

But by all means consult a lawyer about this. I'm not one, as we know.

Sure but it is a good example of libel per se. One doesn't have to delve into what was meant by saying it because on its face, a domestic terrorist is a criminal.

Talk about generalizations! You have no clue what a court will do. Calling someone a domestic terrorist is plenty to file a claim that will be heard. Whether there is a judgment in the plaintiff's favor is kind of irrelevant.

Tammy
Did you run for the BOD and not get elected?

In fact, that's a good way to really piss off some judges - they will yell at both parties and tell them to go out in the hallways to straighten this out. And if they don't, the judge (now REALLY ANGRY) will straighten both of them out, and it won't be pretty....